The Ethics of Forgiveness

Author(s): Hastings Rashdall

Source: International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jan., 1900), pp. 193-206
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2376036 .
Accessed: 15/05/2014 06:19
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
International Journal of Ethics.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Ethics of Forgiveness.

I93

than was the ethic of social intercourse in the Dark Ages,

tried by the abstract or Christian moralities then current.
And though there are elements of amelioration, it seems
perfectly likely that the process will be no quicker in the one
case than it has been in the other.
Howsoever that may be, it seems warrantable to say that
no Utopia worth sighing for will ever be realized until the
ethic of opinion-making is overhauled all round with something of the austerity preached by Clifford, and with distinctly
more vigilance than he practised. One of the first steps, I
sometimes think, should be a writing of the history of philosophy afresh, to the end of noting the element and the
quality of psychological or emotional bias in every leading
thinker in turn,-the inherited habit, the degree of passion,
the revolt against old dictation, the personal provocations, the
financial and social interest. But there had need be few motes
in the eye that seeks to make that survey.
JOHN M. ROBERTSON.
LONDON.

THE ETHICS

OF FORGIVENESS.*

THE duty of forgiveness is a subject which obviously could

not be thoroughly discussed without a previous investigation
of the theory of punishment. The rationale of forgiveness
must depend on the rationale of punishment. If I were to
enter at any length upon such a discussion now, it would
occupy all our time, and therefore I must be content with explaining and assuming a certain position in that matter without much argument, and then going on to apply it to the
perhaps more difficult, and certainly less hackneyed, topic to
which the present paper is devoted.*
This paper is written from the point of view of one who
regards the retributive theory of punishment as irrational,
immoral, and I may add wholly unchristian. The idea that
* A paper read before the Martineau
March 3, I899.

Society in Manchester

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

College, Oxford,

I94

International Journal of Ethics.

punishment can be an end in itself apart from the effect

which it is to produce upon some spiritual being is to my
mind inconsistent with the very idea of rational morality.
Nothing can be an end in itself except some state of a conscious being, and to say that a state of conscious being is an
end in itself is to say that it is good. The essence of punishment is the endurance of pain or some other evil. In spite of
the high authorities that may be quoted for the contrary
view, I venture, under the aegis of Plato and the many Christian thinkers who have found his ideas on this subject in
essential harmony with the Christian temper, to maintain that
an evil cannot under any circumstances become a good except relatively-either positively as a means to some intrinsic
good or 1S'apopdxou s'&se medicinally,

by way of remedy against

some worse evil. If it be said that punishment is a good as

a means to the vindication or the assertion or the avenging of
the Moral Law, I should venture to ask how an abstract
a mere
" vindication " or " assertion " can be a good-how
event or occurrence in nature can be a good except in so far
as it is the expression of some spiritual state or a means of
producing such a state. Even the Moral Law itself is not an
end in itself, but only souls or wills recognizing and regulating their action by the Moral Law. If it is said that the
avenging of the Moral Law is right because it is the expression of the avenger's indignation, that is an intelligible
answer; and I freely admit that the expression and cultivation of indignation is one of the purposes of punishment,
though this can be hardly regarded as an end in itself, but
rather a means to an end,-the spiritual good of the man
himself. But if punishment is to be justified on account of
the good it does to the punisher, we have already gone some
way towards the abandonment of the retributory theory in its
ordinary form; and further a question arises as to the
punisher's right to inflict evil on another in order to cause
* I have already dealt with the " Theory of Punishment " in the pages of this
(October, I89I).

JOURNAL

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Lthics of Forgiveness.

I95

good to himself. He-the punisher-is no doubt an end in

himself, and is justified in seeking his own good; but what
right has he to ignore another's good except as a means to
some greater good of his own or of the society in which he
lives ? It will hardly be seriously contended that such and
such a sentence of five years' penal servitude is to be justified
because the pain involved is outweighed by the spiritual good
which Mr. Justice So-and-so may have secured to himself by
passing it. It may be suggested that it is justified because it
is the expression of the indignation of society; that the sentence tends to promote in society a reverence for the law
which the criminal has broken, or, again, that the punishment
produces moral good in the offender. In either case we have
now frankly abandoned the idea that punishment is an end in
itself, and have adopted the view that it is a means to some
good in society at large or to the criminal himself. It is true
that the word " deterrence" hardly expresses adequately the
fact that the good which punishment confers upon society is
in part a spiritual good; that it tends not merely to deter
men from committing crime, but to impress upon their minds
to be avoided and
the idea that crime is wrong,-something
hated for its own sake. The word " reformation," again,
hardly does justice to the idea that it is good for the criminal
to feel the indignation of society, to feel the external effects
of his wrong-doing; that that is itself a moral good in its
way, one which it would be perhaps worth while (if we are to
raise so abstract and unpractical a question) to promote, even
if we knew that in this particular case it would not lead to
that which is the ultimate object of punishment (so far as the
criminal himself is concerned), the alteration of his will, the
change of his character. It is at least good, as far as it goes,
that the criminal should feel the external strength of the
Moral Law, even if he cannot be made to feel or to respect
its intrinsic authority. Both the " deterrent theory" and the
" reformatory theory" are no doubt inadequate to express
the whole truth about punishment. There is a side of punishment which might perhaps be best expressed by the term

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

196

International Journal of Ethics.

" educational theory "; or, perhaps, all the aspects of punishment might be recognized at once by saying that the end of
punishment is partly deterrent or utilitarian, and partly ethical.
It is sometimes supposed that the utilitarian view of punishment is inconsistent with a proper respect for human personality: it involves, we are told, the treatment of humanity as
an end and not as a means. If by " utilitarian " theory is
meant a view resting upon a hedonistic theory of ethics, I
have nothing to say in its favor; if by " utilitarian " is meant
simply a view which treats punishment as a means to some
good, spiritual or otherwise, of some conscious being, I
should entirely deny the justice of the criticism. In the first
place I should contend that in a sense it is quite right and
inevitable that we should treat humanity as a means. When
a servant is called upon to black the boots of his master, or a,
soldier to face death or disease in the service of his country,
society is certainly treating humanity as a means: the men do
these things not for their own sakes, but for the sake of other
people. Kant himself never uttered anything so foolish as
the maxim which indiscreet admirers are constantly putting
into his mouth, that we should never treat humanity as a
means: what he did say was that we should never treat
humanity only as a means, but always also as an end. When
a man is punished in the interest of society, he is indeed
treated as a means, but his right to be treated as an end is not
thereby violated, if his good is treated as of equal importance
with the end of other human beings. Social life would not
be possible without the constant subordination of the claims
of individuals to the like claims of a greater number of individuals; and there may be occasions when in punishing a
criminal we have to think more of the good of society generally than of the individual who is punished. No doubt it is a
duty to think also of the good of the individual so far as that
can be done consistently with justice to other individuals: it
is obviously the duty of the state to endeavor to make its
punishments as far as possible reformatory as well as deterrent and educational to others. And how the reformatory

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Ethics of Forgiveness.

I97

view of punishment can be accused of disrespect for human

personality, because forsooth it uses a man's animal organism
or his lower psychical nature as a means to the good of his
higher self, I connot profess to understand. The retributive
view of punishment justifies the infliction of evil upon a living
soul, even though it will do neither him nor any one else any
good whatever. If it is to do anybody any good, punishment
is not inflicted for the sake of retribution. It is the retributive theory, to my mind, which shows a disrespect for human
personality by proposing to sacrifice human life and human
well-being to a lifeless fetich styled the Moral Law, which
apparently, though unconscious, has a sense of dignity and
demands the immolation of victims to avenge its injured
amour propre.
The real basis and stronghold of the theory which I am
investigating is to be found in the undoubted psychological
fact that the sense of indignation or resentment at wrong arises
naturally and spontaneously in the human mind without any
calculation of the personal or social benefits to be derived
from gratifying it, and in the profound ethical conviction that
for societies-though not always for individuals-it is morally
good and healthy that this indignation should be encouraged
and expressed. " Revenge, my friends," says Carlyle, " revenge and the natural hatred of scoundrels, and the ineradicable tendency to revancher oneself upon them, and pay them
what they have merited; this is forevermore intrinsically a
correct, and even a divine feeling in the mind of every man."
Such language I could cordially adopt, though with the proviso (of which more hereafter) that this feeling is not so divine
as the love which the best men do succeed in feeling towards
the worst, and that it must not be allowed to extinguish that
higher feeling. The feeling of indignation is a natural and
healthy one,-natural and healthy, we may add, in partial correction of Carlyle, in proportion to its disinterestedness. It
is one great purpose of the Criminal Law to give expression
to this natural indignation against wrong. But law, in the
discharge of its ideal function as vovu alev 7wd3OoqV,
seeks not

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I98

International Journal of Ethics.

merely to express but to regulate, and to regulate with a view

to an end. In the words of Sir James Stephen, " the criminal
law regulates, sanctions, and provides a legitimate satisfaction
for the passion of revenge; the criminal law stands to the
passion of revenge in much the same relation as marriage to
the sexual appetite." And in both cases the ultimate end of
the regulation is to be found in a certain ideal of social wellbeing.
The mistake of the upholders of the retributive theory lies,
as it seems to me, in representing a mere emotion or feelingan emotion or feeling which in itself a good, an important
element in every well-balanced character-for a judgment of
the Moral Reason. The Moral Reason may often judge that
the emotion should be freely indulged, though at other times
it will no less emphatically pronounce that the most elementary requirements of social order demand its partial or
entire restraint. The real question is whether it is right to
punish simply because we feel inclined to do so, to gratify a
natural passion simply because it is there, or whether in this,
as in the case of other spontaneous emotions or desires (in
cluding the spontaneous impulses of affection and benevolence), we ought to regulate passion by reason, to act for an
end, i. e., for the promotion in ourselves and others of whatever we take to be the ideal kind of human life. How the
existence of an instinctive resentment against personal wrong,
or in good men against wrong to others or moral depravity,
can suspend the one all-comprehensive duty of love to men
(including, of course, ourselves) is a question which will, perhaps offer no difficulties to those philosophical moralists
whose ethical system seems to consist in the mixture of a
little truculent Theology borrowed from primitive Judaism
with a good deal pure paganism; but which must, I think, be
an embarrassing one to those Retributionists who profess any
sympathy with Christian standards of Ethics. The most
Christian of the Schoolmen (e. g., Wycliffe) always maintained that God's punishments were, and man's should be,
the expression of love.

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Ethics of Forgiveness.

I99

And this remark brings me to the proper subject of this

paper. It is one of the great embarrassments of the retributive theory that it is unable to give any consistent account of
the duty of forgiveness and its relations to the duty of punishment. It is seldom that one finds anybody so logical as
to maintain that it is always a duty to punish, and never right
to forgive, at least till the wrong-doing has been expiated by
punishment,-a theory which runs counter to a strongly felt
and widely diffused ethical sentiment and which makes the
First Offenders' Act a piece of immoral legislation. Others
seem to have no answer to the difficulty but the admission:
" Here are two inconsistent moral precepts: it is a duty to
punish and a duty to forgive: it is impossible to lay down
any general principle in the matter: you must do what you
can in each case as it arises." Such an answer may satisfy
those who think that morality consists simply of a collection
of isolated impulses, intuitions, or particular judgments, which
Reason is incapable of reducing to any consistent or intelligible whole. It will hardly satisfy those who believe that
our ethical judgments can be reduced to a system, and that
the emergence of apparent ethical antinomies simply shows
that we have not yet succeeded in getting to a really fundamental ethical principle. The absence of internal contradiction, though by itself it will supply no adequate content for
the Moral Law, we may surely venture (with Kant) to regard
as a necessary condition of any law which can really claim to
be moral. If the duty of punishment is to rest upon an a
priori deliverance of the moral consciousness which pronounces that, be the consequences what they may, sin must
be punished, it is difficult to see how forgiveness ever can be
lawful. If punishment is sometimes right and sometimes
wrong, on what principle are we to distinguish between the
two classes of cases ? That is the problem to which, as it
appears to me, no intelligible answer can be given on the
retributive theory, but which is not insusceptible of a solution
on the basis of the utilitarian or educational view.
Among the very few moral philosophers who have bestowed

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

200

International Journal of Ethics.

any serious attention upon this question of forgiveness is

Bishop Butler. By him the duty of forgiveness is resolved
into the duty of being " affected towards the injurious person
in the same way in which any good men uninterested in the
case would be if they had the same just sense, which we have
supposed the injured person to have, of the fault. After
which there will yet remain real good-will towards the
offender" (Sermon IX.). The duty amounts to this: "that
we should suppress that partial, that false self-love, which is
the weakness of our nature; that uneasiness and misery should
not be produced without any good purpose to be served by
it; and that we should not be affected towards persons differently from what their nature and characters should require."
"Resentment," he says again, "lis not inconsistent with
good-will; for we often see both together in very high
degrees; not only in parents towards their children, but in
cases of friendship and dependence, where there is no natural
relation. These contrary passions, though they may lessen,
do not necessarily destroy each other."
The duty of resentment and the duty of forgiveness are
thus reduced to particular applications of the general law of
promoting social well-being. It is our duty to make our own
personal resentment subordinate to the general good of
society, just as it is a duty to subordinate good-will towards
individuals to the interests of other individuals. In determining whether we should resent or punish an injury (to ourselves or to others) or whether we should forgive, we should
simply consider what is best for the interests alike of the individual himself and of society at large, the offender's good and
the injured person's interest alike being assigned its due, and no
more than its due, importance. The distribution (so to speak)
of punishment and of forgiveness will alike be guided by the
general principle of benevolence or good-will to society in
general, the duty of promoting the greatest good on the
whole,-guided and controlled by the Benthamite principles
of " Equity," which will be generally accepted in the modified form, " everybody's good is of the same importance with

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Ethics of For-giveness.

20I

the like good of any other man." And here I may add, once
more, that in the social well-being or good I assign a paramount place to moral well-being.
It may also be observed incidentally that on this view of
the duty of forgiveness as simply a particular manifestation of
the general duty of love, we are able to clear up an ambiguity
about the meaning of forgiveness which often occasions some
difficulty in discussions of this kind. We are often told that
forgiveness is not inconsistent with punishment; that we may
punish first and forgive afterwards, at least where punishment
is a duty arising out of some public function or parental relation and not a mere gratification by legal or extra-legal
means of resentment against private wrong. And this is quite
true as far as it goes; forgiveness may mean simply the cessation of personal resentment after the exaction of whatever
penalty may be demanded by considerations of social wellbeing and public duty. But, although in practice the adoption
of this attitude may no doubt be easier in the public official
than in the private person, it is impossible to draw a hard and
fast line between punishment inflicted by the official in the discharge of public duty and the resentment exhibited by the
private person, or between the vengeance which takes the form
of legal prosecution and that which shows itself in private
remonstrance or the refusal of social intercourse. Even legal
punishment generally requires private initiation, and the same
considerations of social well-being which require legal punishment in some cases require private resentment in others.
It would be to the last degree disastrous to the well-being of
any society whatever if individuals altogether ceased to show
anger or to express resentment at personal rudeness or personal liberties or general want of respect for one another's
personality; and from the nature of the case it is usually the
injured party who must take the initiative in such resentment,
though it may be that the ideal society would save him such
a necessity by anticipating the resentment,-an ideal which is
already approximately realized in groups of people among
Vol. X.-No.

I4

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

202

International Journal of Ethics.

whom good breeding is combined with the real good feeling

of which good breeding is at the best the expression and at
the worst the mere caricature.
All this shows that we cannot attain to the ideal combination of punishment with forgiveness by merely laying it down
that in our public capacity we punish and in our private capacity
forgive. Nor, again, can we merely say that the duty of forgiveness begins when the due punishment has been exacted.
For what will forgiveness mean in this case? Are we to say
that when the formal sentence has been served, it is the duty
of the judge or of society generally to treat the criminal with
the same cordiality with which we should have received him
had he never offended ? Undoubtedly society does not give
its repentant criminals the fair chance that they may reasonably
claim, but to say that we must treat them as though they had
never done wrong or that former convictions should not aggravate the sentence is surely to demand what is impracticable and
pernicious. Nor in private relations can we always be called
upon to treat the man who has betrayed our trust-even after
repentance or apology-as though he had not betrayed it; nor
can a friend, after a quarrel which has revealed in him a character which we had not suspected, ever again be a friend in
the same sense or degree as before, even after the most ample
repentance or apology. Without, therefore, denying that there
is a sense in which forgiveness may be combined with punishment, it is impossible to find for that forgiveness which is
compatible with punishment a meaning more definite than
this-that punishment should not exclude whatever kind of
good-will can under the circumstances be properly combined
with punishment. And that surely is something far too indefinite to satisfy the idea of forgiveness. It is impossible, in
short, to get rid of the popular association of the idea of forgiveness with remission of penalty.
There is, then, a sense in which forgiveness is opposed to
punishment. On the view that I have taken it will sometimes
be a duty to punish and sometimes to forgive. In determining which we shall do in each particular case, the good man

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Ethics of Forgiveness.

203

-whether the private individual or the public official, who is

after all only the representative of a society of individuals who
are as much bound by the law of love in their corporate as in
their individual capacity-will consider which, having regard
to all the circumstances of the case, will best serve those social
ends to which punishment and forgiveness alike are means.
The ideal punishment would no doubt be one which was the
best alike in the interests of society and of the individual.
Under our present systems of legal punishment it is to be
feared that this is an ideal not very often attained. A man
has often to be punished in the interest of society whose own
well-being would be best promoted by forgiveness. In such
a case we must balance the interest of society against the
interest of the individual, or rather perhaps what the society
gains by the moral improvement of the particular individual
against what it gains from the deterrent and educative effect
of the punishment upon other individuals.
And upon this view of the relation of punishment to forgiveness, there is no absolute antagonism between that sense
of forgiveness in which it is opposed to punishment and that
sense in which it is compatible with punishment. Just the
same considerations which impose the duty of punishment
will limit the measure of it; just those same considerations
which allow of the total remission of penalty in some cases
will allow of some mitigation of it in other cases, and will
impose in all cases the duty of showing whatever benevolence
and good-will towards the offender is compatible with that
measure of punishment which social duty demands. Punishment and forgiveness, when they are what they ought to be,
being alike the expression of love, the mode and degree of their
combination will likewise be only the application of the general precept of love to the circumstances of the particular case.
In the main, then, we may accept Bishop Butler's interpretation of the proper relation between punishment and forgiveness, and yet we cannot but feel that something is missed in
this cool and calculating utilitarian analysis. We feel that
there must be something more in forgiveness than the mere

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

204

International Journal of Ethlcis.

limitation of vengeance by the demands of public welfare.

The late Sir John Seeley, in one of the best chapters of
" Ecce Homo," helps us to supply the deficiency. It is true
that in its essence the duty of forgiveness is the duty of laying aside private or personal resentment,-of resenting the
wrong because it is a wrong and not because I am the victim
of it. But what Bishop Butler has missed is the fact that
vengeance often loses its moral effect just because the avenger
of the wrong is its victim, while forgiveness often strikes the
heart just because the forgiver is the man who suffered by
the wrong,-and therefore the man in whom it is hardest to
forgive. The wronged man's forgiveness will often have a
moral effect, awaken a gratitude and a penitence, which the
forgiveness of the disinterested spectator or the remotely
interested "society" would not secure. It is perfectly true,
as Butler taught, that forgiveness is only a particular case of
love; but he forgot that to a human being who has wronged
his fellow, forgiveness is an infinitely more convincing proof
of love than punishment can ever be, and may, therefore,
touch the heart as punishment will seldom touch it. In the
light of this principle nothing that has been said as to the
duty of balancing the good effects of forgiveness against the
good effects of punishment need be recalled; only, in choosing between them, this peculiar magic of the wronged person's forgiveness must needs be duly remembered.
I have been dealing with the question of forgiveness as a
purely ethical problem, but, before I conclude, I cannot forebear to add a remark or two upon its theological applications.
The foregoing principles will, I think, give us certain rUzot 7TpOEo~orlaqwhich it would be of the utmost importance to apply to the elucidation or (if need be) to the correction of our
I must be content with suggesting
traditional Theology.
these theological applications in a few rather bald and dogmatic propositions:
The forgiveness of God must not be represented as
(i)
some separable accident (as it were) of the Divine Nature,as a positive fact unconnected with the rest of the Divine

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Ethics of Forgiveness.

205

character,-which might quite well be absent without that

character being any the less perfect, and which can only be
accepted on the strength of some special supernatural assurance distinct from any general revelation of the character of
God (in whatever sense such a revelation may be believed in),
but as an essential element, as simply a particular manifestation of the supreme divine quality of love.
(2) We must not think of divine punishment and divine
forgiveness as revealing contradictory attributes of the divine
nature; they are both of them expressions of the same character, the same changeless love or desire for the highest good
of all creatures. We cannot, therefore, think of God as
capriciously punishing where He might have served the ends
of punishment by forgiveness, or as capriciously forgiving
where a good end might have been served by punishment.
Even the mediavals represented God's punishment as an act
of love. Few of us will be able to follow them in conceiving
of everlasting torments, allowing of no opportunity of repentance or amendment, as the expression of love; and if so, our
acceptance of their perfectly true view of punishment will
compel an important revision of the traditional eschatology.
Instead of inventing arbitrary schemes by which some are to
be punished everlastingly and some to escape without punishment altogether, we shall simply repose in the faith that the
souls of the dead are " in the hands of God," who loves them
and will by whatever means-by pain if pain be needed or
without pain if it be needed not-carry on in them the education which earthly life has begun.
(3) When we look upon punishment and forgiveness alike
as different ways of producing a moral result, when we have
got rid of the notion that punishment can be either demanded
or justified except as a means of producing an effect, or that
forgiveness can be legitimate except where forgiveness will do
the work of punishment, there will be an end of theories
which represent the work of Christ as some mysterious device
for cancelling past guilt or remitting a penalty which might
justly have been inflicted. The atoning efficacy of the life and

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

206

International Journal of Ethics.

death of Christ will have to be found in their actual moral

effects,-the
actual effect made upon the human soul by
Christ's teaching about God's Nature and God's Will, by the
influence of His character, and by the conviction that in that
human love of Christ there is a revelation of the Divine.
HASTINGS RASHDALL.
NEW COLLEGE,OXFORD.

THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS.

I.
In a recent number of the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS
there appeared a short notice of a little pamphlet of mine on
"The Sanctity of Life," in which the critic concluded that
" writers of the school of Mr. Salt seem to have an acquired
incapacity for distinguishing between men and beasts." In
view of the importance, from an ethical stand-point, of our
relations to the lower animals, it may be of some interest to
the readers of this JOURNAL to take a survey of the principle
of Animals' Rights as it appeals to humanitarian minds.
Now instead of confusing men with other animals, we have
often made objection to that popular method of describing
animal life which consists in attributing to animals (as in
Gay's " Fables," for example, or even, to take a modern
instance, in Kipling's "Jungle Book ") a number of quasihuman qualities, and making them "perform," so to speak,
in human guise to tickle human vanity. We hold rather that
animal life, to be really understood, will have to be studied,
by sympathy, from within, and for its own sake, as Thoreau
has remarked in a suggestive passage of his diaries:
" How little we know of the inner life of animals!
How few our facts are,
and how little certain we are of them!
What a huge book, and what an intensely interesting one, is waiting to be written on this subject by some great
genius of the future'! Surely it tells not a little for the in-curiosity and perhaps
for the conceit of us humans that we have been taken up so entirely with our
little selves for these many thousand years past . . . and all the time we have
been acting as if we were alone in the world, and as if it were not inhabited by

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.36 on Thu, 15 May 2014 06:19:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions